A Note on Women’s Access to Dawah Activities

The imperialists are specially targeting our women to corrupt them and pollute Islamic society with the evil of human rights ideology. This strategy has proved particularly effective in Iran where a mass feminist movement has been organized and is now the spearhead of the counter-revolutionary movement against the Islamic government.

We must make no concession to the imperialist agencies on the women’s question.

The steps taken by our government to restrict women’s participation in public life are very necessary but they must be supplemented by positive measures to promote religiosity and spirituality among women at the mass level.

This requires the rapid extension of the Dawah among women. The exclusive women madrisah network can serve as the focal point of this Dawah activity among the women.

The madrisah provides the natural environment for promoting religiosity and spirituality among the masses. The madrisah will serve as education center for enhancing religious knowledge and some essential skills/ literacy among women, as well as it can be used to impart general household management, health and education training programs. All of these trainings are required to serve womenfolk of IEA by these trained women.

Tableeghi Jamat also involves womenfolk in Dawah activities under strict supervision & company of their Mehram.

DAIMG recognizes that IEA is a traditional tribal society where women’s role has been restricted and it has born good fruits by promoting Islamic culture at check and maintaining strong family structures. Now in a changed environment of imperialist attack on Afghan culture it has become a necessary step to prevent the secularization of society. Therefore tribal chiefs, clan heads and other community leaders must be persuaded to accept women’s participation in madrisah as an Islamic alternative to their involvement in the work by imperialist financial CBOs and NGOs.

Dawah work among women (and the masses in general) must be focused on the debunking human rights ideology and propaganda. This is a crucially important task at this stage of the revolution to delegitimize the main ideological argument for imperialist intervention within Afghan society. It is urgently necessary to launch a long term nationwide campaign against human rights ideology. DAIMG would be grateful to be informed about what is being done in this regard urgently.

The key issue is to contrast human rights with حقوق العباد. The Islamic government must appear in the eyes of the masses as the main provider and protector of حقوق العباد. As far as women are concerned the Islamic government must function as the main protector of the حقوق العباد of the wife, the mother and the daughter ensuring حقِ وراثت and حق مہر and reviewing the نظام کفالت to ensure that female headed households are adequately provided for.

The experience of the Islamic Republic of Iran has shown that campaign for birth control and population planning have played a major role in corrupting women. Iran provided such facilities during the 1990s and now realizes the folly of doing this and is abandoning these practices. We must immediately discontinue all imperialist programs for the distribution of contraceptives and all imperialist attempts at discouraging early marriages. It is especially important to immediately halt all psychological support programs targeting women and youth of the UN and the NATO financed Humanitarian Group in Afghanistan.

Working Group on Afghan Economy